Overview

The country is growing and needs a rail system to connect cities from coast to coast. You'll be assigned 5 cities to connect and it'll be your goal to connect them first. Failure to do so will cost you points and enough failures will cost you the game. Winning Moves/Immortal Eyes has recently rereleased this classic and bundled the Vexation expansion with it.

Rules Summary

TransAmerica handles from 2-6 players although I'd recommend at least 4. I haven't played with fewer than that, but it seems like you'd want several competitors to keep things interesting. The game is played in rounds with each player starting with 13 points. You'll then be dealt 1 city card from each of 5 regions (5 total cards) and you'll be trying to connect them. You will then pick a starting point on the map (that has been broken into triangles) and all of your build actions have to extend from this starting point. On your turn you get two placements which means you can place two rail connections. However, major mountains and rivers require both build actions to cross them cutting you down to a single placement on your turn. You can place one and pass if you feel a second placement doesn't benefit you which is rare, but can happen. All rail connections are SHARED so tapping into someone else's line gives both players extra reach. That's where the Vexation expansion comes into play. With Vexation you get 3 rails of your color that can be placed instead of a generic, shared black rail. These placements are not shared when determining if players are connected to something. Using them at the right time is a key part of the strategy in this game.

Once a player connects all 5 of their cities they announce it and the remaining players determine how many placements it would take to complete their rail system. That number of points is subtracted from the player's score and you play again rotating the start player clockwise.

If a player hits (or goes past 0) the game ends and the person with the most remaining points wins!

There have been many printings of this game and other printings have an extra rule about adjusting the end of game after 2 rounds of play. That rule isn't present in this release.

The Pieces

Nothing special here. A map. Lots of little 'sticks' (aka catan road pieces). A deck of city cards. One wooden choo-choo and start cylinder per player.

Playing the Game

This game plays fast and is very easy to teach. The game also seems to have pretty broad appeal.

This game has its share of luck. It's certainly possible to be dealt better/worse cards than other players, but I suspect that's one of the reasons that it's played in rounds. I've seen games end in 2 rounds and take up to 5 rounds to complete. I also tend to like to place my starting point last as I think that can offer a substantial benefit (although given that the game ends when someone completes their route, going first means you'll be able to get that extra placement in before other players do).

Playing your Vexation pieces well is a challenge. I've played one before only to see another player quickly bypass my stupid play in one move. Even so if you can't get some cooperation and another player bypasses in 2 moves it will seem like a wasted play.

I find this game to have a pretty good psycho-analytical aspect to it. Trying to guess where other players are going to build for you so that you can spend time building lines they care little about is quite enjoyable for me. For example, if no one is building out west I usually try and avoid doing so knowing someone will eventually break ground there. Hopefully they'll head close to one of my cities while I finish off another area, but if not then I haven't really lost anything and so long as no one is out west I know no one is about to win.

Immortal Eyes

I'll note that I got my copy of the game at Origins because Immortal Eyes had a $4 tournament that awarded all 16 participants a free copy of the game and I wanted to ensure that I won a game even if I played poorly for the entire weekend. Free t-shirts were given to finalists and $100 was awarded to the overall winner. Unfortunately, I wasn't $100 richer afterwards, but the tourney was a lot of fun and the t-shirt is a nice one. My favorite quote from wearing the t-shirt is "So, what are immoral (no T) eyes games?".

This is a good addition to their lineup and including Vexation makes this game so much better! Kudos to Immortal Eyes for their support of these cons (they're doing similar stuff at GenCon) with good prize support. I know they've also contacted our game group in an effort to get their games noticed and I applaud them as a company (although that has nothing to do with the review of this game).

Fun Factor

Up until Origins '08 I had only played this once. I enjoyed it, but others in the group had already played it to death. When I saw IE rereleasing it with the expansion I figured a) here's a chance to get a good game cheap [I'm being honest], and b) maybe I can get others to play it with this expansion. I checked BGG and see that Vexation has a 7.2 rating vs. 6.7 for TransAmerica alone. Vexation is a marked improvement on an already enjoyable game.

As I write this I wonder if there are any fan made maps for the game so I've checked and while there aren't any print and plays as of yet, TransSib (a java Transamerica clone) has a map making utility. I'll have to check that out.

Summary

I view this game as a classic. It has the interesting property that it's one of few games that handles up to 6 players and doesn't seem to be offensive to anyone (i.e. most games seem to have at least someone that won't play it for whatever the reason). It's a game I'm always up for just because it's fun. It's not terribly deep, but has enough thought to translate to better players beating worse players consistently. It's a game gamers play and families play. In fact last week one of the hard core gamers remarked that it's the only game his Mom had played that he hadn't and I don't think he meant his Mom was a hard core gamer.